Situation:

•The Nets were selected to play in Paris, its first Global Game in five years and first Paris Game since 2008

•This was the 23rd game the Nets have played internationally, the most of any NBA team, which has resulted in an outsized global fanbase

Brief:

•Discover, cultivate and inspire Nets fans in France and build a real connection to the French consumer

•Primary target: Basketball/Nets fans in Paris, throughout France and the region

•Secondary target: Adjacent enthusiasts of culture and New York admirers

•Tertiary target: VIPs – partners/prospective clients, season ticketholders, celebrities and influencers

Objectives:

•Verify our fan data and illustrate the global opportunity to key stakeholders

•Energize the Parisian market through unique experiences that reinforce and amplify brand DNA

•Inspire the market to convert digitally/physically

•KPIs: 250M+ impressions; 10+ stories in French publications; 25K+ emails; double our French database; increase French ticket buyers and revenue by 10%

Brooklyn has carved out its place across almost every lane of culture. Our creative idea was to draw interest and engage fans by creating unique, Brooklyn-themed experiences rooted in culture and creativity. Our campaign was designed to bring the best of Brooklyn to Paris through authentic partnerships across six cultural pillars: music, food, art, fashion, community and sport:

•Music: An Orchestral Tribute to The Notorious B.I.G.

•Food: Brooklyn Nets Pizzeria x Sonny’s Pizza

•Art: KAWS Set Experience

•Fashion: KidSuper and Sonny’s Merch Drops

•Sport and Community: Brooklyn Nets Clinics and Paris Saint-Germain Partnership

Fans feel frozen out of the NBA Paris Game due to high ticket prices and quick sellouts. We looked to expand and democratize the opportunities fans had to engage with the Nets and Brooklyn by creating more accessible, consumer-facing touchpoints (beyond the game) and by elongating the engagement window by months, instead of days.

Target Audience:

•Primary audience: Basketball/Nets fans in Paris, throughout France and the region

•Secondary audience: Adjacent enthusiasts of culture and New York admirers

•Tertiary audience: VIPs – partners/prospective clients, season ticketholders, celebrities and influencers

Approach:

•Simple URL (brooklynnets.com/paris) that is easy to type, recall and clearly reinforces the brand and campaign positioning

•Bilingual site to maximize impact in the French market

•Create a site that can’t be ignored by consistently engaging the user through animation and strategic scroll actions

•Captivate audience through a combination of player and celebrity imagery (Biggie), partner I.P. and beautifully designed graphics that tastefully and authentically combine Brooklyn and Paris aesthetics

•Create a single-page scroll (inclusive of imbedded and animated I-frames) to limit click-outs and create a flywheel effect, educating consumers on the entire campaign and all available events/experiences

•Provide pertinent information and CTAs for each activation to reduce the number of clicks needed to convert

We created a mobile-first, bilingual microsite that launched in December to coincide with the announcement of ticket sales to our experiences. The site included an overview of the campaign and individual sections, grouped by cultural pillar, for each unique activation. It acted as a hub for the entire campaign, boosting awareness and conversion for all our activations in market. When fans visited the site to learn about one element, they were educated on the others.

The campaign was fully integrated and promoted across every channel we could deploy, including: organic and paid social/digital, OOH, email, broadcast, retail, influencers/celebrities and partner channels. Every piece of collateral featured the website URL as the singular call to action. The site also housed six unique contests throughout the campaign, incentivizing fans to return for their chance to win.

Media:

•1B+ impressions (GQ France, L’Equipe, Le Monde, SBJ, NY Post, Hypebeast)

•116M impressions, 5.2M engagements, 58.9M video views across Nets social channels ($3.4M earned media value)

•450K+ visits to Brooklyn Nets in Paris microsite

Brooklyn Nets Pizzeria:

•3,300 visitors from 12+ countries; 1,700 pizzas sold, 2x weekly average for Sonny’s Pizza

•+35% average in-store weekly revenue for Sonny’s

•Five-figure merchandise revenue

Biggie Orchestra:

•1,960 attendees

•Six-figure ticket revenue

•Sold out in five days

•+20% in Biggie streams in France

KAWS Experience:

•10K+ visitors at NBA House

Basketball Clinics:

•1,000+ kids from 35+ schools/community programs

Emails:

•64K+ emails and 33M contest impressions (+280% entries compared to average Nets contest)

•+240% in French database size

Nets Tickets (in Brooklyn):

•15K+ Nets tickets were sold to French consumers this season ($1.3M+ in revenue), +110% tickets sold and overall revenue